Since the 1970s, experimental filmmaker and poet and lesbian Abigail Child has been engaged in a kind of cultural archaeology. Unearthing found footage from such disparate sources as industrial films, vacation and home movies, porn loops, and snippets from forgotten Bmovies, she recycles and updates approaches to cinema that have a freshness and sense of wonder that recall the movies’ silent days. While this approach suggests the reactionary, the result is in fact quite the opposite. Child’s work, which plays periodically at such venues as the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Cinematheque, is the subtlest form of agitprop, powerfully exploring very modern issues of gender and class through early and presentday, for that matter cinema’s primary artistic strategy: montage, both visual and audio. Also like silent film, Child’s work shows an unselfconscious delight in the visual.

Website: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/32/abigailchild.html